From May 24th to 26th 2011 Bayreuth will host the first “BIGSAS Festival of African and African Diasporic Literatures” under the theme “African Conceptualisations of Europe”. The festival, which is open to the interested public, is intended to explore the world of words in an age witnessing a transition from hard books to soft books available on the internet. The authors and artists invited will engage in readings and performances between prose and poetry, drama and short story, music and politics. In doing so, the festival will connect artists from Harare and Berlin, London and Ibadan, Djibouti and Paris, Yaoundé and Bayreuth. This year’s festival will focus on conceptualisations of Europe both within African and African diasporic literatures. These fictional wordings will be framed and supplemented by lectures, round tables and open debates. The aim is to contribute to a public debate about current conceptualisations of Africa and Europe which are often biased and carry distorted notions of ‘Self’and ‘Other’, still heavily informed by colonialist fantasies. A major question of interest is: what positions do African intellectuals hold of these conceptualizations of processes in Europe and the stances taken by people living in the African diasporas in Europe and the Americas? Basically, how do they challenge, subvert and reconstruct notions of Europe as a white Christian entity? The readings, round table talks, podium discussions and lectures will throw light on these questions. Given the range of topics and the expertise of the invited authors and speakers, this festival promises to be entertaining, interactive and stimulating.

Entry is free

Check out http://www.bigsas.uni-bayr
euth.de/literaturfestival/ for more info. Or grab the flyer somewhere. Or get in touch.

Sonntag, 8. Mai 2011

"The horror (Das Grauen)". Those happened to be Mr Kurtz last words, reflecting his involvement in the atrocities commited in the Belgian Congo. Back in colonial times of course. In case you haven't read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, you might just be familiar with the movie Apocalypse Now. It's an interesting adaptation of Heart of Darkness set in Vietnam/Cambodia. You might remember Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz. "The horror, the horror...". Yes, he said it, too.

Back to colonial Congo: "White King, Red Rubber, Black Death" is a BBC documentary about King Leopold II's personal genocide in what is now called Congo DRC. The wealth Leopold acquired through the brutal exploitation of the Congo's peoples went straight to colonial Belgium. Making it the classical, culturally cultivated European country that one might encounter during tourist sight seeing trips. You know, museums and statues and fine turn-of-the-century nostalgia.

Mutilated Congolese child

It makes you wonder about all those other former colonial super powers (incl. Germany). Makes you wonder who paid for the gorgeous old Amsterdam waterfront? Who paid for Liverpool, Lisboa and numerous other European cities that flourished in the era of the transatlantic slave trade? How much wealth derived directly from colonial exploitation? Would a non-colonial Europe even bare the faintest ressemblance to the fat cat fortress of today? Grand Europe, the one that shits its knickers when debating on the fate of a couple shiploads of North African refugees locked in on Lampedusa? Let's not talk about this.

Sankofa is this mythtical bird of the Akan symbolism that tells you to watch your behind and learn from past. Maybe Europe should replace their damn war mongering eagle seals with the Sankofa bird. Maybe it would trigger some panoramic insight into their actual role in history. Just a thought.